In honor of the “coming” of spring

Posted on May 1, 2012 by wellsdc

The weather is nice enough most places…

(SPOILER ALERT: I should mention the NSFW lyrics…)

Thoughts on Game of Thrones: “Anyone Can Be Killed”

Posted on April 30, 2012 by wellsdc

(Watch for spoilers, as always.)

Arya Stark: I think it is fair to say that there was enough badassery crammed into little Arya Stark tonight to create a quantum singularity in the middle of Harrenhal.

Apparently people are “shipping” her and Gendry. Arya is ten years old, maybe eleven. They aged the characters up for the TV show so they could show Daenerys naked, but that still makes Arya twelve at the oldest. Ew.

I hope they show more Jaqen. Pun retroactively intended.

Bronn: He has to be the most endearing sociopathic killer of all time. He and Tyrion are quite the a grim comedy duo.

Theon Greyjoy: They’re building this up quite nicely. (If you haven’t read the books, un-read that last sentence…)

Qarth: Judging from the map during the opening credits (which I didn’t really notice last week), Qarth is not quite where I thought it was. Not that I had much information to go on.

Doreah: In one of what is becoming more and more departures from the books, Doreah rather conspicuously did not die of dehydration in the Red Waste. Since she is both interesting and hot, I can’t blame the producers for keeping her around. It’s intriguing how Daenerys is consciously dispatching her as a sex spy.

Pyat Pree: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. That dude is creepier than I imagined. He clearly owes a bit to some other creepy scifi/horror icons.

Notice how he looks a bit like Rev. Kane from Poltergeist 2:

And the Gentlemen from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer:”

And, of course, Bob from “Twin Peaks:”

Good luck sleeping now…

Corporate Marketing Jumps the Shark at #BlogathonATX

Posted on April 28, 2012 by wellsdc

I promise I will never, ever wear these again.

Men are from Earth, Women are also from Earth. Duh.

Posted on April 28, 2012 by wellsdc

Imagine traveling into the mind of a sub-par mid-1980’s standup comedian who is trying out new material on how men & women are different. It might be a bit like the board game “Battle of the Sexes.” This is a great game if you want to feel kind of sad. I had the great privilege of playing last night with a group of friends, for about 30 minutes, until we were overwhelmed by a sense of how far humanity has progressed over the past few decades despite the existence of games like this.

From the Amazon.com product page:

The Battle of the Sexes Game is about defending your gender tooth and nail. It’s the perfect game for couples, or groups of couples, who want to have fun and watch the hormones fly while they’re at it. As a proponent of your sex, you must test your knowledge of the opposite sex by answering questions from a series of gender-based question cards. Some questions appear terribly easy, until you realize that the opposite sex must answer them. For instance, how easy would it be for a woman to answer the following: “What is Grolsch?” Answer: beer. “What does a Zamboni do?” Answer: resurfaces the ice on hockey rinks. And, what about a man answering these: “Which member of the bridal party usually throws the bridal shower?” Answer: the maid/matron of honor. “How many birth control pills come in a single pack?” Answer: 28. And then there are wild cards for each gender that are good lines of defense against the opposite sex. Examples: “Make her carry your golf clubs? Go back three.” “You offer to be his designated driver, again? Move ahead one.”

I’ll just leave it at that.

Everyone who has ever worked in food service has imagined doing this. Here’s why they shouldn’t.

Posted on April 27, 2012 by wellsdc

Have you ever been a frustrated food service employee, annoyed with that customer who never quite seems satisfied with their order? Have you ever joked about possibly spitting in someone’s food? (Full disclosure, I thought about it, but never did it, while working at the on-campus Coffeehouse in college.) As it turns out, it is not so funny when it happens in real life. For anybody.

A couple of weeks ago, a mother and daughter ordered food, including sweet tea, from the drive-thru at a McDonald’s in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Upon receiving their order, they learned that the tea was not sweet. Or at least not sweet to their liking, so they went back and asked for new drinks. They noticed that these weren’t sweet either, but they decided to go home and sweeten them there.

This is the part of the story where the phlegm comes in. Stay with me. Continue reading →

Just Because It’s Natural…

Posted on April 27, 2012 by wellsdc

I’ve written two posts this week on things that are purportedly “natural:” first food, then beauty. A few months ago I poked fun at the notion that my new hydrogen peroxide-based contact lens cleaner was somehow not “chemical-based” (I also mistakenly created the impression that I store my contacts in water, which I do not.)

It occurs to me that words like “natural” and “chemical-free” are really just shorthand for something to the effect of “not things we don’t like.” Of course my contact lens cleaner, with all of its bright-red, large-print warnings not to put it directly into my eyes, is not free of “chemicals.” Of course those bits of “shredded” “wheat” are not “natural.” We just tell ourselves this to feel better about an overly technological, strangely alienating world that has nonetheless done a pretty good job of keeping us from dying of smallpox.

There’s no real point to this post, other than to point out other things that are clearly natural, and juxtapose them with things that are not at all free from chemicals.

Chemical-based: Dihydrogen oxide.

Natural: Hurricanes.

Continue reading →

Thoughts on Game of Thrones: I Can’t Believe They Went There

Posted on April 26, 2012 by wellsdc

This will be a quick one. It will almost certainly have spoilers.

Melisandre: For once, I wish they hadn’t stuck so close to the book. I know exactly what it is coming out of Melisandre’s nethers, and that still seriously freaked me out. I worry a bit that we will stay hung up on the fact that we just watched Melisandre birth a smoke monster, but for the love of the Seven, pay attention to what happens next.

Littlefinger: Seriously, that had to be the worst pick-up line ever. I think the Littlefinger/Catelyn Stark non-romantic subplot may put the lie to the Nice Guy(TM) theory like no other.

This is also yet another disappointingly-blunt statement from the famously-understated Littlefinger. I am concluding that his level of subterfuge and intrigue just doesn’t translate to the medium of television.

Robb Stark: I wasn’t sure where they were going with that encounter between Robb and the Volantene nurse (which was not in the book, BTW). She was awfully sassy for someone addressing a king. I think the scene showed two things: Robb is not the sort of king to take slights too personally, and Robb is not a hero to most of Westeros. His explanation of why it was necessary to maim that kid encompasses the absurdity of everything about his world.

Harrenhal: Yes, it’s a place, not a character. The audience doesn’t know very much about it, though. I feel like readers of the books have a major advantage here. It has to be hard to convey Harrenhal’s ignominious history through expository dialogue, but it seems like the screenwriters haven’t even tried yet. Maybe if some of Littlefinger’s hospitality consultants asked about Harrenhal’s history while naked, we might get to hear the story.

Also, I highly doubt that anyone much remembers the throwaway scene from last season when Ned Stark sent Beric Dondarrion to the Riverlands to bring the King’s justice to Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane. Without that information, Polliver’s gratuitously-cruel interrogations about the “Brotherhood” make no sense at all. Those of us who have read the book are feeling a strange sense of dramatic irony over those who haven’t.

Daenerys Targaryen: Qarth looks pretty. I’m glad that I finally know how to pronounce Xharo Xhoan Daxos’ name. I don’t remember exactly what his character does, but I like him so far. Just don’t get too attached to him or anyone else.

Tyrion: Stop being so freaking cool! Also, I don’t care if it screws up the continuity, please let Bronn kill Ser Meryn. That would just be fun, albeit in a sadistic way.

Beauty and Bad Journalism (UPDATED)

Posted on April 26, 2012 by wellsdc

Meet Florence Colgate. She is an 18 year-old resident of Deal, Kent, England, the equivalent of a high school senior. She might be the most beautiful woman in the world, according to both “science” and Gawker editor Neetzan Zimmerman.

Zimmerman made this declaration because, apparently, Zimmerman does not know how to read. “Science” may have been misquoted, as it was probably too busy with things like the Large Hadron Collider to worry about who is the fairest of them all.

Now, Colgate is a phenomenally attractive young woman. Almost into the realm of otherworldliness, if photographs are to be believed. I’m also sure she is a very nice person. She’s getting hate on her Facebook page that she doesn’t deserve. But really, the whole world? Doesn’t picking a blond, blue-eyed, English girl as the most beautiful woman on all of planet Earth seem a bit convenient?

I’ll set aside the questions of the various racial and gender implications of this selection, because others can undoubtedly address those issues with greater knowledge than I ever could. I would instead like to address the undue violence that this story has done to the concepts of journalism and science. Continue reading →

Thanks to Steve Doocy, Every Time We Lie, We Can Just Say We “Paraphrased”

Posted on April 24, 2012 by wellsdc

“Being born rich is Mitt Romney’s greatest accomplishment.”

We can thank Stephen Colbert for that one. Colbert had a brilliant bit on Fox News’ Steve Doocy doing something inconceivable for a cable news host, particularly one on Fox News: Doocy made some shit up.

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(As an aside to the people who seem to genuinely believe that Colbert is really a conservative punking the rest of us: the National Institute of Standards and Technology recently recalibrated the average American penis length to 2.5 inches. Congratulations on your newfound virility.)

Back to Doocy: yup, he asked Mitt Romney about a slur against Mittens’ wealth, uttered by Obama, that Obama never actually uttered.

I guess it’s okay to do that because the oppression of the obscenely wealthy is a national scourge that must be rooted out, right?

Sarcasm aside, the Dooce realized the error of his ways and issued a heartfelt, honest apology. Except for the fact that he did not do that. Here’s what he said:

Last week President Obama talked about not being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. That was interpreted as a big dig at Mitt Romney. When I was interviewing Governor Romney on this show I asked him about it. However, I did some paraphrasing that seemed to misquote the president. So to be clear, the president’s exact quote was, ‘I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.’ And I hope that clears up any confusion.

Here’s what The Raw Story had to say about the clarity of the confusion:

Actually, Dooce, that does not clear up all the confusion. You clearly reached for a piece of paper on-air in your interview with Romney in order to read this fabricated quote. Who wrote the material you were reading? What was the source for that version of the quote? Were you reading from internally produced material or from a third-party source? From how high up in the Fox News universe did this fabrication originate?

Continue reading →

Kashi, hast thou forsaken me?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by wellsdc

Kashi GOLEAN cereal is pretty much a staple of my breakfast routine, in large part because it is one of the only cereals available at Costco that doesn’t have a year’s worth of sugar in each serving (although it still has quite a bit). Also, it has protein and is probably the closest thing to a “healthy” breakfast cereal that doesn’t require actual cooking (because I am lazy in the morning and it is all I can do to make coffee). I have never had any illusions that GOLEAN cereal is in any particular way “natural,” since that is a vague enough adjective to be meaningless and it only takes one look at the cereal sitting in a bowl to see that nothing quite like it occurs in nature (absent industrial-scale intervention, I mean).

A photo making its way around Facebook today depicts a sign at a Rhode Island “natural” food grocery explaining why they have removed all Kashi products from their shelves:

You might be wondering where your favorite Kashi cereals have gone.
It has recently come to our attention that 100% of the soy used in Kashi products is Genetically Modified, and that when the USDA tested the grains used there were found to be pesticides that are known carcinogens and hormone disruptors.

Whoa. So, what exactly does that mean? Calling something “Genetically Modified,” or “GM,” particularly when the words are written in title case, is often enough to send many people running for the hills. GM food is scary to many people, because it is so poorly understood and unfamiliar, because it often represents corporate malfeasance and greed, and because we often have little to no idea what the hell is in our food. I would like to learn a bit more about Kashi, and about the whole GM thing, before I set fire to my remaining GOLEAN Crunch.

WTF does “natural” mean in this context?

'Hostess Twinkies' by Evan-Amos (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

These actually grow on Twinkie trees

As Vivian Ward might respond, what do you want it to mean? Unlike “organic,” there is no legal standard for use of the word “natural” in food marketing or pretty much anywhere. It tends to evoke a sense of “not overly processed through mass industry,” a process that gives us Twinkies and McDonald’s french fries. To produce anything for public retail distribution requires some industrial processes (unless you buy all of your food at farmers’ markets, in which case you live a life of remarkable privilege and have little in common with most of the rest of America). How much processing is too much? I pick on Twinkies because they are about as far from “natural” as one can get (full disclosure: I love Twinkies), but really, unless you want to consume all of your groceries within two hours of purchasing them, you need some amount of processing just to function in our society.

WTF does GM mean at all? “Genetically Modified” covers a wide range of processes, some innocuous, some insidious, and some downright disquieting.

Uh, yum?

Humans have been genetically modifying food since the dawn of agriculture, so the mere fact of “genetic modification” should not frighten anyone. Corn and bananas are two excellent examples. Corn was derived from a grass native to Mesoamerica called teosinte, which is inedible and bears no physical resemblance to corn at all. Bananas, originally from southeast Asia, developed from giant, inedible seed pods into the fruit we know today, thanks to human intervention. On the animal side, ponder how long a chicken could survive in the wild, and whether it ever would have survived as a species this long if it had evolved to its present form purely “naturally.”

That brings us to modern-day “Genetic Modification.” Again, this covers a wide range of processes, all of which ought to be better-explained to the public, but some of which are no cause for major concern. Since I am not a scientist, I rely on dumbed-down sources to understand this stuff (thank you, Wikipedia, et al). The two major methods of GM’ing food in modern terms is cisgenesis and transgenesis. Cisgenesis involves transferring genes between similar organisms, essentially speeding up a breeding process that could occur “naturally.” Transgenesis involves inserting genes from a different species, creating something akin to a hybrid (or mutant) organism. Continue reading →

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